Creator Bio

Arnold Zweig

1887–1968

The German-born novelist and writer Arnold Zweig is best known for his antiwar novel The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1927). A Zionist who was heavily influenced by Martin Buber, he wrote a romantic account of his own encounter with Russian Jewry, The Face of East European Jewry (1918), which was illustrated by Hermann Struck. He was also influenced by the writings of Freud, with whom he corresponded for twelve years, and in 1927 published a psychological study of antisemitism, Caliban oder Politik und Leidenschaft. After the Nazi takeover, he settled in Haifa, but, unable to master the Hebrew language and frustrated that Zionism failed to develop in a binational and primarily cultural Buberian direction, he left the newly created State of Israel to settle in Communist East Germany, where he was much feted by the new regime.

Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator

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De Vriendt Goes Home

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De Vriendt shut the door, but stayed with his forehead pressed against it; the strength had gone out of him. This Englishman knew. He knew the nature of his relation to…

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The Face of East European Jewry

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Is this the Jew of the East? Is he an old man, who, almost entirely removed from the present day and certainly removed from the future, lives a life that is limited to the most oppressed and narrowest…

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The Jewish Census (Judenzählung)

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At midnight a soft hand touched me: “Get up.” I stepped outside the silent sleeping barracks and saw: Azrael, the angel who reigns over the dead rushed down from the night firmament, all revenge…